


break you down, mark you up

by Snagglefanged



Category: Naruto
Genre: Gen, Hatred, Human Experimentation, Medical Torture, Medical Trauma, Mutual Loathing, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-05 23:36:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15874017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snagglefanged/pseuds/Snagglefanged
Summary: Otogakure is a place to suffer in. Circumstances force Karin and Suigetsu to encounter each other. It's not good for either of them. What they leave each other with won't stop hurting in a hurry.





	break you down, mark you up

Karin is useful, because 'useful' is better than 'dead.'

Karin is quick to learn, because those who are slow run out of time for learning and life both.

And Karin helps only herself, because there is no kindness here, only survival, and the hand one reaches out to save another is a hand not there to save oneself.

She has learned to close off her heart to the pleas of others, as many in their own turn must have closed off their hearts to hers. She has learned to do whatever must be done, to follow the orders she's given and never look back.

(She doesn't need to look back, because the memories aren't behind her; they're etched into her skin in scar upon scar upon scar, overlapping ragged half-moons of pain and lost vitality. She covers them up, where she can.)

No matter what she's asked to do to others, it has to be better than being the one in their position. They'd do the same in her shoes. Not a one of them will ever forgive her for it, but she's learned not to care about that either. They'll carry their grudges into the grave soon enough, in a place like this.

It's easier to hate them in turn for the way they feel to her senses, the way their anger crawls across her sight, twisting spirals of barbed wire that are still never enough to hold anyone at bay. Anger can keep you alive here, for a time, but it's no magical shield against it all.

Their chakra disgusts her, on a purely visceral level, and that helps; if they're disgusting, there's never any danger of pitying them. Pity is weakness. Pity could get her killed.

(She tries not to think about the way Kabuto's chakra feels, and Orochimaru's. She tries to pretend she can't feel that twisted eagerness seeping through the air, dripping off every surface it touches. She tries to pretend that hot baths still make her feel clean and perfumes still chase away the stench.)

Karin is very, very good at her job, and as long as she's good at her job there is something she can  _be_ , other than an expanse of skin awaiting yet another set of teeth seeking the vitality beneath.

Many of them have stopped asking her for mercy, and that helps too. When she'd first come here, some of them had tried to plead with her, appeal to the soft heart they'd hoped she'd have.

_Please, don't let them do this to me._

_Let me out._

_You don't belong here, little girl, and neither do I, we could escape together, if you just let me out -_

_The keys, hurry! For pity's sake, the keys!_

_No, not like this, not again, please, not again -_

_Kill me. Kill me, please, if you can do nothing else, just kill me..._

Those words had echoed in her head, once, kept her awake at night hearing them over and over. But even the ones who'd begged so piteously had left marks as deep as the ones who hadn't, had drunk as greedily from her chakra when it was presented to them, and so she'd learned to hate them too, and she'd learned to shut out their pleas the same way she shut out the curses and insults from others.

It's just another trap she's too smart to stumble into now.

Let them beg, or curse, or scream; it always ends the same way. Their fates are sealed already; hers needn't be.

All she has to do is be strong, and learn well, and do what she's told to do. All she has to do is endure, and wait for a time when her other skills are so valuable that it'd be a waste to use her for healing this way. One day, she'll know so much more, and this won't be what she's used for anymore. Maybe she'll even learn to heal in other ways, treat herself, watch her scars fade away.

(It would be nice to think that she could find a way to be rid of them. And she's working for a man who can go from one body to another, so it isn't as though the laws of nature and biology are immutable here. If she can find a way anywhere to shed these scars and see nothing but unmarred skin, it has to be here, surely.)

She's fourteen years old, and the collection of scars is only growing.

* * *

Suigetsu is strong. He's had to be. Weak shinobi don't survive Kirigakure. They don't complete A-Rank and S-Rank missions, earn fearsome titles, and make those around them speak of their future Swordsman position not with 'if' but with 'when.'

But that future is gone. It vanished when he was taken away, and dragged into a place more hellish than any he'd known before.

Every single day thereafter has lessened his chances. At first he'd been sure that if he could only escape, he could go home and explain somehow and make it all right again. He could weather the disgrace of capture and rise again, stronger.

But every day he spends in captivity diminishes the chance of being seen as anything but a deserter, just another traitor disappearing mysteriously from the ranks of Kirigakure's shinobi forces. He knows that, and he also knows that whoever did this to him would have had a vested interest in having him condemned for treason. They wouldn't want anyone to listen to him even if he did show up again, after all, because...

Because the real traitor isn't Suigetsu. It's whoever made sure that Orochimaru would know his mission details. It's whoever made sure that a simple assassination had turned into defeat and humiliation at the hands of the _true_ enemy who'd been waiting for him.

Orochimaru had been _expecting_ him.

That thought has gnawed at him since then, sour and painful. Someone out there had hated him enough, or simply loved money enough, to condemn him to _this_. If he ever finds out who, if he ever gets the chance to get hold of that person, he's going to pay them back tenfold for everything he's suffered because of them.

He holds onto that anger, uses it to sustain him. He clings to his dreams, vows to find some way to accomplish them even with a setback like this.

It _is_ just a setback, after all. He'll get out. Somehow.

Every escape attempt means they tighten their security around him, but he learns from every attempt too, and one day he'll find his way out. He tells himself that, over and over, and tries to use that determination to hold himself together.

Anger and willpower are all he has, now, his only weapons against everything going on around him. 

He won't break down. He _can't_.

He'll fight it all the way - he's been fighting it all the way. Even when it hurts him worse, forcing his captors to use all their strength and resources every single time they want to use him for something means he hasn't lost yet. He isn't some passive little toy to be messed around with however they like, and they'd better remember that.

Suigetsu has to remember that, too, because he has his pride, and if he has his pride it isn't as bad when he's all alone in a dark room, near-silent, unable to get out of his tank or see or hear anything except what's right there. If he has his pride, it isn't as bad when they peer at him and make notes like he's some kind of specimen instead of a ninja so deadly his body count had hit double digits before his age had.

Even his pride doesn't help so much when the other things happen, though, when the water's full of things that make him dizzy and sick, or when they run electricity through the metal surface of the table they put him on, or when he can't move at all, can't do anything but try to hold himself together as parts of him are forced into solidity -

He lets the fury carry him through those, anger the only thing that holds back the fear and agony even a little bit.

He has to escape soon, the little voice in the back of his head is warning him, or there might not be enough of him left at all.

He's fourteen years old, and trying not to fall apart.

* * *

Karin hates this one more than most. His chakra is awful, filled with wild rage and vicious calculation by turns, all of it promising a gruesome death if even one mistake is made in his vicinity.

And he says such foul things - constant insults, mockery, innuendo, crafted to get under the skin of even those who've learned to disregard the things prisoners say to them. He doesn't just unload a bundle of obscenities, most of the time; he actually works on them, and shapes them until they sting. Being sworn at is nothing to her, generally, but after he's unleashed the kinds of insults he's been storing up, she tends to get wild fantasies about turning up the electrical current until it fries him into silence.

(He's infuriating, but that makes it easier for her to forget that he's no older than she is, so that's one small benefit, at least.)

Right now, he's not shaping insults. He's just twitching, now and then, and something like a whine keeps escaping his throat, as though he doesn't even have the strength left to scream. His body is covered in seals that keep him from reverting to a liquid state, and his eyes are glazed enough that he's probably not fully aware of what's happening to him.

Karin wouldn't want to be aware of any of it, in his position, but she isn't, so she just hands Kabuto the scalpels, and every other tool he requests, and makes notes as he announces the sizes of the organs he's measuring. She doesn't ask why, either; that's none of her business. Whatever Kabuto is investigating matters less than making sure she's cooperative enough while he investigates it that he doesn't get any bright ideas about what to do with her, too.

There's another twitch, stronger this time, as the test subject tries to pull away from what Kabuto's just done inside his abdomen, and an annoyed little sound from Kabuto.

"Oh, not _again_." He sounds as though he's complaining about getting mud on his shoes, not the fact that he's just cut something that oughtn't be cut and the blood is welling up inside that cavity. The movements on the table become desperate spasms of agony, and it only makes the situation worse. Kabuto sighs theatrically, and glances at Karin. "You'd better deal with that, then," he advises, his voice blandly cheerful, pitching it to carry over that hoarse, desperate whine, even when it begins to sound more like sobs from a throat too strained to give full voice to the pain.

Obediently, Karin moves to the head of the table, and shudders.

This is the _other_ reason why she's hated this one all this time - because deep down, she's always known this might happen, that she might have to do this for him, and those teeth of his are a terrifying sight under these circumstances. She wants the scars to disappear. Failing that, she at least wants to be able to forget who made them, let them all blur into nothing in her memory. There's no chance of that with teeth like these.

He's looking up at her now, and there's an awful awareness in his eyes.

 _No,_ he mouths, and she reads it on his lips even when she doesn't want to. _No. Don't._

"Today, if you please," Kabuto reminds her, still so incongruously pleasant on the surface.

Karin grits her teeth, and settles her arm between those fangs. The test subject doesn't bite down - he's never been cooperative, and she doesn't know why she expected him to start now - and she has to force his mouth to close with her other hand, pushing on his jaw until the razor-sharp points of his teeth pierce her skin.

 _No,_ that stare still seems to say, but in the end, the instincts for self-preservation win out, and he begins to suck feebly upon the chakra spilling out of the wound.

She's bleeding, and it _hurts_ , and she can feel that repulsive tug upon her chakra as though he's contaminating her with every moment his chakra draws upon hers. She endures it, knowing Kabuto is watching, unwilling to show weakness in front of him, until it's over, and she can reclaim her arm, slump into a chair, and watch as Kabuto pulls the seals off his hapless subject - still alive, this time.

Two other med-techs - just flunkies, really, laboratory support grunts whose names she's never learned - drag that one away, back to his tank. He'll probably be left in there to recuperate, until he's strong enough to survive the next experiment.

With any luck, Karin will be busy with some other task by then.

She sterilises and dresses the fresh wound on her arm - it's worse than usual, and extra care is needed this time - before staggering away back to her designated room in this hideout. The weariness is heavy enough that all she can do is sleep, now, and put off everything else until morning.

Karin's never been slow to heal, and by morning she can examine the wound again and know, without a doubt, what shape it will take.

She wants to scream in fury, staring down at it. Every fang's imprint picked out in scar tissue, even the one crooked one he sports, his stupid little dental quirk - all of them are there, forever, and she can't even pretend she doesn't know whose teeth these were. She can't let this scar blend anonymously in with the others, losing its significance in the crowd.

He's _marked_ her. He's left her with some hideous memento of his existence, practically signed his _name_ on her, and that makes it worse than any of the other scars she has. Nobody she hates should be able to leave something like that on her, mar her until she can't even forget ever encountering him. Not even his death will free her of that.

She _hates_ Suigetsu, Karin thinks with fierce bitterness, looking at the mark he's left behind, and wishes he'd never been born.

* * *

By the time he wakes, the pain is nearly gone.

Suigetsu stares dully out into the room beyond his tank and tries to shut out the knowledge that everybody around here has been able to see the way his body tapers into a tail from the waist down.

(That should have been private, something from home, something from his clan. It should have been his choice, who gets to see him like this. Here, though, it's just one more secret torn from his body while he's helpless to prevent it.)

He floats halfway up the tank, barely moving, listening to the muffled sounds of the machinery that keeps this room running. He doesn't need to look down at himself to know that the wounds have disappeared, though his imagination can still sketch out exactly where they had been.

_Bright lights, steel bands about his limbs, seals stuck to his skin, the sight of his tormentors' glasses as their eyes vanish behind the blank concealment of reflected lights -_

_The sound of his own voice and the shame of knowing it's him making those noises, succumbing to it all that way -_

_The sheer wrongness of having organs manhandled that were never meant to be seen -_

_And the pain, so sickeningly intense that everything else had faded away from him._ It's all there, flooding back into his memory. There had been nothing but the pain before, and he'd forgotten his past, his future goals, everything but the wounded-animal agony of knowing that things were happening to his body that were hurting him.

Somewhere beneath all that, he'd known, when the sensations had changed, that he was dying.

It'd been a _relief_.

They couldn't hurt him anymore if he was dead. There'd be no more pain and fear, no more humiliation and degradation.

He'd have got free, in the only way he could.

And then  _she'd_  been there, and he'd known what that meant, even if less than a minute before that he hadn't been able to comprehend her as anything more than another thing inflicting pain upon him, and he'd even tried begging - the shame of that nearly chokes him now, thinking how far he'd fallen to have done that - but it hadn't made a difference.

She'd forced him to bite down, and she'd held him there while he'd felt the burn of her chakra, _someone else's chakra in his system_ , working through him, denying him even the death that's the only mercy anyone in this filthy place ever gets.

And now here he is, alive, stuck knowing that whatever follows, it's because of _her_ that he has to be here to experience it. Here he is, knowing someone like _her_ has seen him like that, has had the chance to judge him at his weakest. And even if he remembers how to want to survive, it just means he has to owe someone like _her_ for keeping him alive. He loses out either way, there.

Suigetsu slams his fist against the glass, teeth bared, face contorted with helpless fury. This is _her_ fault, all of this.

He _loathes_ Karin utterly, Suigetsu thinks, striking the glass again and again to no effect. If only she'd never been born.


End file.
